


every night I slept, I dreamt I was with you

by formidablehedgehog



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Roommates, also i can't believe I actually finished this no matter how bad it is, sorry - Freeform, that's fiction baby!, the other one is more daydreamy than he would actually be, this is 2k of pointless banter and then 1k of the actual plot I meant to write, too much usage of the words "kiss on the cheek" and variations thereof, unrealistic love confession in that one of them is more coherent than he would ever be in real life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:41:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27652892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/formidablehedgehog/pseuds/formidablehedgehog
Summary: Every night, without fail, Michael gives Luke a kiss on the cheek before settling down under his duvet, and Luke needs to know what it means.
Relationships: (mentioned) - Relationship, Calum Hood/Ashton Irwin, Michael Clifford/Luke Hemmings
Comments: 17
Kudos: 56





	every night I slept, I dreamt I was with you

**Author's Note:**

> hello everyone and welcome to this shitshow! this is Not edited so please feel free to point out any errors that you see! i don't really know what else to say about this fic because it's really Not That Deep, so enjoy!  
> title is from meet you there by 5sos

Luke doesn’t get phone calls often; if something can’t be said in a text or email, he probably doesn’t want to hear it. So, when he gets an actual call - not a FaceTime or a voice note, but a _call_ \- from Michael, a few days before they’re supposed to move back to campus, he assumes the worst. Maybe Michael’s dead, maybe he’s actually dropping out, maybe he’s realized that he never stopped hating Luke and doesn’t want to be roommates anymore. Nonetheless, he picks it up and immediately has to turn the volume down because Michael’s _yelling._

“I won! I beat all the other amateurs and I got it!”

Luke really doesn’t know what Michael’s on about, so he asks, “Michael, it’s eight in the morning; what are you screaming about, and more importantly, _why_ are you awake?”

Michael scoffs, “Who cares about sleep when I was in a _war_?”

“For the thousandth time, Call of Duty is neither a real war nor a reason to pull an all-nighter. Go the fuck to sleep.” 

“I will, I will, just _listen_ for a second.” Luke is about to ask him what else he thinks Luke’s doing, if not listening, but Michael speeds ahead, “It wasn’t Call of Duty, it was a _bidding_ war! on eBay! I got us a dope-ass couch for $169.73 after outbidding the last guy standing by four cents! The couch has these like extendy things and unfolds in a bunch of different ways and—” 

“Hold on, you got _us_ a couch?” 

“Yeah, dude, for the dorm. What else would I be talking about?” 

“Michael, how the fuck are we going to fit what sounds like a decently large couch in our literal shoebox of a dorm room?” 

“Don’t worry about that.”

Michael telling Luke not to worry is usually a sign that Luke should be _massively_ worried, but he’s really too tired to argue with him. 

“Well, congrats, I guess. Looking forward to seeing if this couch is as good as you say it is. And, y’know, miss you and all that.” 

He can hear the smile in Michael’s voice when he replies, “I miss you and all that, too.” 

The next few days pass in a blur of trying to figure out what to bring with him for move-in, and really, one would think that since this is Luke’s fourth time doing this, he’d be more efficient at it by now. But no, here he is, trying to decide between two nearly identical Blink posters at three a.m the night before he’s supposed to drive up to campus. 

He passes out sometime around seven a.m, which isn’t great considering the fact that he should be out the door around noon if he wants to make it there at roughly the same time as Michael. His parents aren’t coming with him this year since they’re busy moving Jack into a new apartment in some random city halfway across the country that Luke should _probably_ know the name of, so he’s the only one holding himself to this schedule, which turns out to be a bit of an issue when he wakes up at three p.m with no one to blame but himself. 

It’s not a long drive by any means, Luke’s just a shit driver and compensates by driving exactly at the speed limit at all times to ensure he doesn’t get pulled over. By the time he makes it to his and Michael’s room for the year, Michael’s already there, with his apparent solution to the floor space dilemma being to shove the two bed frames together in one corner of the room, have the drawer/desk combination pieces right next to each other in another corner, and have the couch take up the rest of the space. The couch _does_ look pretty sick, and comfortable as hell, but _still_. They can’t live like this, no matter how few boundaries are left between them at this point. 

Luke realizes he’s frozen at the doorway, trying to process the new set-up, when Michael laughs at him a bit and says, “Well, are you going to come in or not?” 

Luke takes in the sight of Michael, here, right in front of him for the first time in months, and strangely, he almost wants to cry. He thinks that’s a weird feeling to have when reuniting with a friend, so he settles for pulling Michael into a big hug, complete with teasing bro pats on the back and ridiculously cheesy grins on both of their faces. 

He hears a clicking noise behind them and turns around to see Ashton, in the hallway, holding one of those cute Fujifilm cameras and grinning while holding out a freshly taken Polaroid for Luke to look at. It’s cute, almost looks like he and Michael are a couple, and he— wait, _what_ ? Why is he suddenly having this many dating-y thoughts about Michael? They’re _friends_ , and Luke has never _once_ wanted to be anything more than that. 

Whatever, he can deal with _this_ later, once Ashton isn’t standing a few feet away from him and laughing at him for some unknown reason. 

“Nice sleeping arrangement, you two,” he says with a grin.

Michael, with all the self-assurance and haughtiness of a career politician, says, “It’s the only way the couch would fit, and that couch is my baby. My _flesh and blood_ , Ashton.” 

Ashton hums consideringly and says, “I don’t think I need to explain to you why that wouldn’t work but fine, sure, carry on. Whatever helps you sleep at night. Literally, in your case.”

“Can’t you go annoy Calum or something? I need to help Luke move in,” Michael whines, and since Ashton hates whining, he actually acquiesces, giving them one last smirk before wandering farther down the hall. 

“Go on then, help me move in,” Luke taunts, once the door has finished swinging shut. 

“Oh, fuck _off_ , it was the only way he was going to leave. Now come on, unpack your shit and try out the couch. Playing video games all summer wasn’t as fun without being able to kick your ass every time I play,” Michael says, as he flops face-down onto the couch, muffling his own words. 

Luke can’t allow such blatant disregard for his skills and indignantly responds, “I resent that implication. If we were playing on the Wii, I’d beat you every time.” 

“You’re a _child_.”

“Shhhhh, don’t distract me from my unpacking. We need to make sure our clothes stay separate this year,” Luke says, knowing full-well that that’ll fall apart within the first week of classes. 

“No matter how well you organize the closet, I am _going_ to steal the black hoodie as soon as I get the chance.”

“You’re not a very good thief if you’re notifying me of the robbery before it happens. What if I put motion-activated dynamite in it or something?” Luke says, even though he kind of loves seeing Michael drowning in his hoodies and definitely _isn’t_ going to do anything to hinder that. 

“You’re not a chem major; you don’t have access to that stuff. Also, how would _you_ wear the hoodie if you did that?”

“Shut up, I never said I was an effective anti-thief.” 

Michael groans, “This conversation is sending my brain cells into exponential decay.”

“Alright, I get it, you’re an engineering major, there’s no need to confuse me with weird math words.” 

Michael gives him a deadpan look. “Luke, you’re literally a data science major.”

“Doesn’t mean I understand any math.” 

“That’s concerning for so many reasons.” 

They’re silent for a moment before Luke wonders aloud, “Should I hang things up separated by color or by type of clothing? Like, should my red t-shirt and red hoodie go together?” 

“Make a spreadsheet about it,” Michael says, finally flipping himself around on the couch so that he’s sitting normally. 

“Fuck you.”

“I mean… I’m down for it if you are,” Michael smirks. Luke flips him off in response; Michael’s smirk grows bigger. Luke turns back towards the open doors of the closet so that Michael doesn’t see the flush rapidly spreading across his face. 

Luke tries his best to ignore that interaction as he hurries through arranging the rest of his closet and getting his desk set up. Michael seems to be setting up his PS4 while he waits for Luke, so he’s not really looking when Luke stands there for a few seconds just taking him in. He’d sent pictures of his hair when it was newly dyed, but it’s faded out to a soft, soft pink now, and Luke suddenly thinks that’s his new favorite color. Well, now that he thinks about it, his favorite color seems to change right alongside Michael’s hair, but that’s _probably_ just because of repeated exposure. 

“You done organizing yet, Marie Kondo?” Michael asks, a teasing smile stretching across his face as he digs out the controllers and tosses one at Luke. 

Luke narrowly manages to catch the controller and responds, “If I was Marie Kondo-ing this, I’d kick you out. Only keeping things that spark joy and all that, you know?” 

Michael tries to aim a kick at him from where he’s once again sprawled out on the sofa, but Luke just grabs his leg and tugs him a bit closer to where Luke has settled on the sofa, letting Michael’s leg land in his lap as Michael clicks past the home screen. 

“What’re we playing?” Luke asks, since he hadn’t seen Michael put a disk into the console.

“FIFA.” 

“Ooooh, can we do FIFA 15?” 

“Of _course_ that’s the one we’re playing, who do you think I am? It’s got the best soundtrack and the fútsal option, so really, it’s the best choice.”

“Glad we’re on the same page, then.” 

They play for a few hours, mutually deciding to get up and figure out something for dinner around ten p.m. They knock on Ashton’s door, but they hear a rushed, “Busy, sorry!” from someone who sounds a lot like Calum and they exchange knowing looks. 

“When do you think they’ll figure out that we know?”

“Knowing those two, probably when they ask us to be their best men.” Luke laughs a little, shaking his head, which makes him stumble into Michael a little bit. Michael puts a hand on Luke’s hip to steady him. Luke isn’t prepared for how that little point of contact suddenly makes him feel like a livewire, so he inconspicuously steps away from Michael. 

“So, what are we actually doing about the like… bed and couch situation?” Luke asks, figuring it’s best to get that conversation out of the way now rather than in a few hours when he’s so tired that he’ll fall into bed with his contacts still in. 

“What do you mean? What’s wrong with it?” Michael replies, taking out his phone. “I think Panera’s still open, d’you want to head over there?”

Luke is silent for a few seconds, processing the fact that Michael actually doesn’t see a problem with the idea of them sleeping in basically the same bed. “Wha— I mean, first of all, no to Panera, that’s a lunch place. Chipotle’s closer anyways. Second, since when is sleeping in the same bed a thing that we do?” 

“Oh, good idea, I would have killed a man for a burrito bowl yesterday. And come _on_ , Luke, it’s really not that big a deal. The beds are still _technically_ separate, and you know we run on pretty different sleep schedules anyways. Plus, since when are you one to turn down the occasional cuddle?” 

Michael’s always had the infuriating ability to make everything he says sound logical and well-reasoned, so Luke really shouldn’t be surprised to find himself agreeing with what he’s hearing, but he is nonetheless. 

They proceed to have dinner, the highlight of that being the picture Luke takes of Michael double fisting burritos, and they decide to take a walk around campus before they head back to their room, taking it all in through the eyes of a senior for the first time. Luke’s never been particularly sentimental, but… this feels _big_. In ten months, these buildings are going to spit him out into the real world with nothing but a piece of paper and hopefully, Michael still by his side. 

The combination of a busy day and his mild existential crisis make Luke feel exhausted, so he crawls into bed as soon as they get back to their room. He doesn’t fall asleep immediately, instead curling up on his left side and watching Michael play some new single-player game that he’d spent one night playing and texting Luke about in increasing amounts of anguish. Luke had assumed Michael had given up on trying to beat it, but really, when does Michael ever give up? It’s one of the things he likes best about him. His mind is still trying to grasp onto his other favorite things about Michael — _eyes, kindness, humor, talent, arms_ — when he drifts off. 

He stirs a bit when there’s some muffled cursing; Michael must have hit his knee on the bedpost like he always does for the first few days after move-in. As he’s trying to return to his wonderful dream about becoming the world’s foremost chili cheese fry chef, he feels lips brush over his cheek. His sleep-addled brain can’t quite puzzle out what’s happening, only picking up on the fact that the lips are chapped. 

When he wakes up, curled up in the mirror image of Michael, like a set of parentheses, he realizes it _has_ to have been Michael. Let alone the fact that Michael is the only other person in the room, Michael is the _only_ person Luke knows whose lips are chapped even in the middle of summer. He doesn’t know _why_ Michael would give him a kiss on the cheek when he thought Luke was asleep but Michael’s not awake for Luke to ask yet. 

Michael finally blinks himself awake a few hours later and Luke immediately chickens out of asking him. Maybe Michael had just been trying to blow away a mosquito and like, slipped, or something. Michael doesn’t bring it up at all either, so Luke assumes his guess of there being a completely reasonable explanation is right. He can’t quite stop himself from wishing that Michael would try to kiss his cheek while they’re both fully awake, though, and then, he remembers what he’d been thinking as he fell asleep last night. All the reasons he loves Michael. And since the memories are blurred by the haze of sleep, he doesn’t exactly remember coming to the realization that he’s feeling something beyond the friendly love he feels for Ashton or Calum, but this morning, that knowledge feels like it’s settled in his chest, like maybe it’s been there the whole time he’s known Michael. It feels kind of like a cup of his mom’s hot cocoa, or a warm hug, or… a kiss on the cheek from Michael. 

But no, Michael doesn’t bring it up, and neither does Luke, and everything is completely normal other than the amount of times they both quickly look away from each other throughout the day. 

That night, Luke tries to keep himself awake until Michael decides to go to bed, so that he can get incontrovertible proof that last night was just Michael’s mouth accidentally slipping and landing on Luke’s cheek. (Can he get Michael to slip and have his mouth land on Luke’s own? Completely accidentally, of course.) He doesn’t quite manage to keep his eyes open, and nothing causes him to stir at any point of the night, though when he does wake up, it’s with Michael’s head on the same pillow as his and their legs so tangled together that Luke spends a full four minutes carefully extricating himself without waking Michael up. 

Luke wonders if he can sneak a security camera into the corner right above the beds without Michael noticing. Michael always goes to bed so much later than Luke does, so if he does kiss Luke on the cheek again, Luke probably won’t know, and Luke really, desperately _does_ want to know. 

He doesn’t know where to find a security camera on such short notice though, so he settles for chugging two RedBulls around six p.m, figuring that a combination of those and his sheer willpower will make it so that he and Michael go to bed at roughly the same time. 

He turns out to be right, since he’s just barely clinging on to the edges of consciousness when he hears Michael start getting ready for bed. He screws his eyes shut more tightly and tries to make his breathing sound more even. Sure enough, Michael climbs into his bed and leans over to give Luke a light kiss on the cheek. Luke had checked for mosquitoes before going to bed, so he thinks this is definitely a valid data point. But, one data point doesn’t make a trend, so he needs to see if this ever happens again. 

Over the next few nights, he makes it a point to go to bed around 3:30 in the morning, a solid half hour before Michael usually does, so that he can adequately pretend to be asleep when Michael finally climbs into what is increasingly becoming one big bed that they share, rather than their two individual ones. Every night, without fail, Michael gives Luke a kiss on the cheek before settling down under his duvet, and Luke _needs_ to know what it means. 

A few days later, he falls asleep on the couch that might actually have started this whole thing, now that he thinks about it. Without the couch, he and Michael would still be on opposite sides of the room, and there would be no confusing cheek-kissing happening. He’s awoken from his nap by the sound of Michael unlocking the door, back from his evening class, and he hasn’t done anything to indicate that he’s awake yet, so he’s not entirely surprised to feel Michael press a quick kiss to his cheek yet again. This time though, he grabs Michael’s wrist as he’s turning back around. 

Michael laughs nervously and squeezes his eyes shut a little. “I thought you were asleep,” he says, and Luke wants to skip this talking bit and skip straight to the part where he gets an _actual_ kiss out of Michael, but Michael keeps talking anyways. “I don’t know why I just did that, and like, I’m super sorry if that made you uncomfortable. _God_ , I’m sorry, I’ve probably been crossing so many boundaries and—” 

“Michael?” Luke asks calmly. 

“No, yeah, I _know_ —” 

“It didn’t make me uncomfortable. I liked it. This time and all the others.” 

“Right, yeah, again, I’m _so_ sorr—, hang on, what? You’ve _known_?”

“If we didn’t end up having this conversation today or tomorrow, my next plan of action was just going to be turning my head when you did it so that you’d _actually_ kiss me.”

This seems to stun Michael into silence, so Luke takes a step forward and takes Michael’s face in his hands, tilting it upwards just a bit. Michael’s eyes flutter shut, and Luke pecks each of his cheeks before finally, _finally_ connecting their lips. And, if little touches from Michael felt like a livewire, this is the equivalent of switching on a circuit breaker. When they finally remember that they need to breathe and break away from each other, and Luke gathers enough of his wits about him to gasp out, “Michael, _Michael_ , I’m in love with you. What is this going to be for you?” 

When Michael smiles, he always does it with his whole face, and this instance of it is a softer and more tender version of it when he replies, “When I was bidding on the couch, I wasn’t really thinking about this room. I was picturing us sharing an apartment, putting this couch somewhere we could still cuddle on it while I kicked your ass at FIFA.” Luke pulls him down onto the couch and kisses him again. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! comments/kudos are super duper appreciated :)) come be my friend at @glitterblazercalum on tumblr (no I haven't figured out how to do links on here yet lmao)


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